Hair styling appliances are generally known and include hair straighteners, hair curlers, hot combs and devices for volumizing hair.
Hair straighteners, which are sometimes also referred to as hair irons, are used to straighten the hairs. These hair straighteners usually comprise two jaws which are hinged in order to pinch a strand of hair. Each jaw comprises a structured or unstructured plate (herein also referred to as heating tip or heating barrel), one or both of which are heated directly or indirectly by means of a heater. An additional heat control system may be applied to regulate the temperature of one or both plates. The hair straightener is usually either powered by main supplied electricity or battery-driven.
To straighten the hairs, a strand of hair is inserted into the hair straightener, wherein it is pinched between the two heating tips (heated plates). The two jaws of the hair straightener may thereto be moved from an open position, in which the two jaws are spaced apart from each other, to a closed position, in which the two jaws at least partly contact each other. A hinge is usually provided at the rare end of the hair straightener. This hinge couples the two jaws with each other to permit a user to swivel at least one of the jaws around a hinge axis between the open and the closed position.
Hair curlers usually comprise a heated cylindrically shaped curling iron tip around which a hair strand can be wrapped to impart a curl. These hair curlers may either comprise a handle and have a similar form as hair straighteners in order to manually curl the hair, hair strand by hair strand, or the user is provided with a set of a plurality of hair curling elements that are directly fixated on the head of the user via a clamp with the hairs wrapped around it.
Most of the known prior art hair styling devices are specialized devices, specifically specialized for straightening, curling or volumizing. Users therefore have to have a plurality of different hair styling devices, one device for each specialized hair styling appliance. This is of course not only costly, but also takes up a lot of room e.g. in the private bathroom.
GB 1 519 930 describes a portable electrical hairdressing appliance which can be used either (a) as a curling or waving appliance or (b) to straighten the hair by enabling the curl or wave to be removed if necessary. The appliance comprises two heater units each having one surface provided with corrugations and the opposite surface smooth, means being provided to bring either the two corrugated surfaces or the two smooth surfaces into contact. The corrugations of the two surfaces match one another. The heater unit is changed from one position to another by pivoting it manually through 180°.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,627,852 B1 discloses a curling iron with rotatable asymmetrical heating tips. This curling iron allows curling and straightening hairs with one and the same device. It so to say provides a two-in-one solution. The user may change the device set up from a curling mode to a straightening mode, and vice versa, by rotating one of the asymmetrical heating tips around a rotational axis lengthwise along the handle length. Users may therefore easily alternate between straightening hair and curling hair while still using the same device.
However, there is still room for improvement. Even though the above-mentioned device known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,627,852 B1 allows to curl and straighten hairs with the same device, this device does not allow to be applied for still other ways of hair styling, such as e.g. for volumizing the hairs.